Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to image detection, and more specifically, to the selection of feature points within images.
Background of the Invention
In computer vision and image processing the concept of feature detection refers to methods that aim at computing abstractions of image information and making local decisions whether there is an image feature of a given type. The resulting features will be subsets of the image domain, often in the form of isolated points, continuous curves or connected regions. There is no universal or exact definition of what constitutes a feature, and the exact definition often depends on the problem or the type of application. A feature is effectively defined as an “interesting” part of an image, and features are used as a starting point for many computer vision algorithms. Since features are used as the starting point and main primitives for subsequent algorithms, the overall algorithm will often only be as good as its feature detector. Consequently, the desirable property for a feature detector is repeatability, that is, whether or not the same feature will be detected in two or more different images of the same scene.